The Toronto Maple Leafs season is over, ending with a first-round loss in the Stanley Cup playoffs at the hands of the Boston Bruins. That means head coach Mike Babcock has time to take stock of what his team can do better next season, and has recently led to him meeting individually with players. He's currently in Denmark, where goaltender Frederik Andersen is participating at the 2018 IIHF World Championship with the hosts, and prior to that was in Arizona, the home of Maple Leafs star forward Auston Matthews.

That visit, one that was publicly reported Babcock would go on, was of great interest because of what was reported right after Toronto's season ended. Hours after a Game 7 loss against the Bruins, Sportsnet's Nick Kypreos reported a fracture in the relationship between Babcock and Matthews, citing sources who said the coach had "lost" his star player late in the regular season, contributing to his lack of production in the seven playoff games.

Babcock addressed his relationship with Matthews in an interview with TSN's Darren Dreger on Monday. Both coach and player have since denied the reported rift, but Babcock did supply context for the dynamic between the veteran head coach and 20-year-old sophomore forward.

I'm not changing anybody in the media's mind on anything; they get to do whatever they want. This is what I do know: The player knows, and the coach knows, and the rest doesn't much matter. He wants to be better, I want him to be better, I want our team to be better, he wants to be playing now, so that's what we're working toward. He wants to be the best two-way player in the game so we're going to work as hard as we can. It's not going to be rosy every day -- it never is. Anybody who perceives the National Hockey League that things are going good every day, it's not like that. It's a competitive, competitive atmosphere. It's competitive in the room, it's competitive on the bench, it's competitive in practice, but that's why the guys love it. That's why they're in it. The best players want to be pushed. They want to be pushed the hardest because they want to be the best.

It very much sounds like what was originally reported is much ado about nothing, though Babcock did take time to explain the fragility of these types of relationships, but also stressed ultimately that, " ... our guys like one another."

There's a real fine line, and not crossing it, and when you do cross it, building a good enough relationship that the guy can say, 'Whoa, whoa.' But I think that's part of it. But on the other side, they don't want to go to sleep; these guys want to get better. I've coached a lot of the great players in the game just because I've been involved with the good teams but also with the national programs -- they push; they want more. Every year they go home; every summer, they're trying to get better. They're trying to reinvent themselves, they want to be better, and we want them to be better, and in order to win, they have to have to get better. The other thing about it is there's a big difference between being 28 and totally established and being 20. And we have a lot of young people on our team ... and so that guidance is going to continue to happen. But we're excited about our group, we really are. We're excited about our people, our guys like one another, we have a good room; we have a good thing going in Toronto. Now, the three-year process that we're in, I mean we set a record this year for home wins and points, but you want to do it now, so we've got to get deeper. When you watch these teams that are playing now, they're deep. And a lot of their guys have been through it a number of times and not had much success and suddenly they're having success. So a little bit of adversity never killed anybody.

Matthews, who just finished his second year of NHL service, turned in another impressive season, with 34 goals in 62 games. He's also set to enter the final year of his entry-level contract, before scheduled restricted free agency following the 2018-19 season.